The Intervention Job
by Write-To-You
Summary: Sophie and Eliot decide that it's overdue to have an intervention regarding the awkwardly blossoming romance between Parker and Hardison.


**Author's Note: You can thank you sisters friend for this thing. She introduced us to Leverage, and I have literally been watching 1-2 episodes ****_every. Night_****. **

**You know, sometimes I think about how many good shows there are, and I ask myself: "Why the heck do I stick with shows that don't make me happy when there are so many that ****_do_****?" And then I finally started to understand why people stop watching shows XD**

The mandatory post-mission regroup was just finishing up. Nate and Hardison had already left the room when Eliot and Sophie made eye contact across the table and exchanged quick nods. Parker had started to stand up and walk towards the door, but the two of them quickly got to their feet and gasped at her arms.

"Ummmmm..." Parker's eyes slid back and forth between them, the spot between her eyebrows wrinkling in confusion. "What is going on...?"

"This," Sophie said, working with Eliot to manhandle Parker into a chair and sit her down. "Is an intervention."

"An.. intervention," Parker repeated, gaze darting to the door. A second before she bolted, Eliot put his hand on her arm and gave her a look. With a humph, she leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms. "Why do I need a stupid intervention?"

"Because your behavior with a certain teammate of ours is messing up our whole vibe," Eliot told her, crossing his arms as well. "And we decided to do something about it."

Parker was still frowning in confusion, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What he means," Sophie interjected. "Is that your beautiful, blossoming relationship with Hardison over these past few months hasn't gone unnoticed."

Parker's mouth fell open slightly. "What?" she stuttered, in a tone that was halfway between 'who, me?' and 'oh crap'.

Sophie clapped her hands with glee. "Oh, I just _knew_ it!" she squealed, reaching over, taking Parker's hand and giving it a squeeze. "This is going to be so _fun_."

Parker slowly extracted her hand. "Someone please tell me what's going on."

"Look," Eliot said, grabbing a chair and sitting down before leaning in towards her. He took a breath and then glanced at Sophie, before plowing on. "Sophie and I have noticed... It's come to our attention that... Okay basically we know you have the hots for Hardison and considering he's basically drooling after you most of the time, we want to make things move a little faster so you two can get your-"

"Happily ever after," Sophie finished dreamily, beaming at her.

Parker's nose wrinkled and she continued to look at Eliot. "You're playing matchmaker?" she asked. "_You_?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, no. _Sophie_ is playing matchmaker. I'm just trying to get rid of what is ruining our team dynamic. I mean, we're in the middle of a con and you two start lookin' at each other, and a bomb could go off and you wouldn't even notice! Which is pretty bad considering that bombs actually _do_ go off when we're pulling cons."

"We don't-" Parker looked sullen. "We would notice a bomb."

"Regardless," Sophie said, cutting in again as she took a seat. "What you and Hardison have is really good, Parker. We just feel the need to, well... move things along."

Parker made one last attempt to get Eliot on her side. "You realize this is going to make you the fifth wheel, right?"

"Yeah," he sighed, before shrugging. "It's alright. What can you do?"

"The fifth wheel?" Now it was Sophie's turn to look uncomfortable. "Pfft. The fifth-? Why on _Earth_ would Eliot be the fifth wheel if you and Hardison got together, Parker?"

Eliot and Parker just looked at her, expressionless.

Sophie coughed. "Anyway," she mumbled, shifting in her chair. "Eliot and I have devised a... plan, of sorts, to kind of force you two to confess your feelings for each other."

"We're going to lock you in a room," Eliot told her, straight-faced. "And not let you out until you tell each other how you feel. Even if you're in there for four days and start starving to death."

"Eliot!" Sophie hissed, hitting him in the shoulder. He gave her a disgruntled look and she quickly folded her hands in her lap. "You weren't supposed to tell her the plan."

Eliot frowned. "Then what are we evening doing right now?"

"We're just _warning_ her- you." Her gaze went back to Parker. "We're just warning you. If something... odd happens in the next couple of days, don't be alarmed, okay? Just know that the faster you tell Hardison how you feel, the faster it'll all be over."

Parker got slowly to her feet. "Jeez," she muttered. "And everyone says _I'm_ insane. Remind me to give you a lot of payback if this doesn't work. Actually, remind me to give you a lot of payback if it does."

Frowning thoughtfully, she skirted around her two self-proclaimed "matchmakers" and left the room as quickly as possible.

"Well." Sophie stood up and arranged her skirt, smiling in satisfaction. "I'd say that went rather well."

**linebreaker**

A few weeks had gone by, but Parker was still unable to think of anything but Sophie and Eliot's plan. It hadn't yet been put into motion (or, at least, she didn't think it had), but things with her and Hardison were getting steadily more meaningful, and also steadily more tense. The guitar string of their relationship was getting too tight, and one stray pluck might send it snapping.

Parker wasn't sure what snapping would mean, and she wasn't exactly eager to find out.

About fifteen days since Eliot and Sophie had ambushed Parker in the meeting room, they were running yet another con. Hardison and Parker were the infiltration/tech team, as usual, and Parker had forced Hardison to swan dive off of a building with her.

After climbing through a window exactly twenty-three stories up, Hardison and Parker got down to business. "Okay," Nate said in their ears. "Hardison, hack into the-"

"Man, I _know_!" Hardison interrupted, rolling his eyes and pulling his computer out of its case slung around his shoulders. "Y'all seem to forget that this is my job and I don't need you to remind me what to do every time we break in somewhere."

Parker snorted, and Nate let out a sigh. "Fine," he said, and she could almost hear him rolling his eyes. "Then... just do it. Quickly."

"Yeah, yeah," Hardison muttered, attaching a cord from his computer to one of the mainframes in the monitor room they were in and clicking a few keys. "Just one second."

It took closer to a minute, which still wasn't very long, and then Hardison and Parker were running for the door. It would be impossible to get out by way of the window, considering that, again, they were twenty-three stories up. They would have to make a more conventional exit.

"Alright, you guys on your way?" Nate asked as they reached the door.

"Uh..." Hardison had twisted the door handle and shoved, but nothing happened. "Uh, it's locked. Like, we're locked in here, it's locked."

"What?" Nate asked, bewildered. "Parker, can you-"

"On it." Parker kneeled in front of the handle. "There's no keyhole. It's gotta be locked by like a keycard from the outside."

Hardison ran his hands anxiously over the top of his head. "Uhhh..." he repeated. "Nate? What do we do?"

"I don't- I don't know," Nate replied, drawing in a breath.

"What's going on?" Eliot asked, tapping into the com conversation. "Why aren't you guys at the exit point yet? People are starting to stare and we can't keep telling them to go into the elevator ahead of us."

"They're locked into the room," Nate told them. "One of you is going to need to get a keycard and get them out."

"Get a key card?" Sophie repeated, incredulous. "Nate, we don't have time for that. We don't even know whose keycard we need."

"I know, I know!" Nate groaned. "Hardison, do you think you can hack, uh, the door?"

"Hack the door?" Hardison repeated, rubbing his hands down his face. "_Hack_ the _door_?! Dude, I can't just plug a usb cord into solid metal!"

Parker had stayed quiet through all of this, her mind whirling. She remembered Eliot's words from a few weeks back: "We're going to lock you in a room, and not let you out until you tell each other how you feel." It seemed kind of stupid that they'd do something like that in a middle of a mission, when it could jeopardize all of their safety. But, then again, Sophie could be pretty rash when it came to the matter of romance.

Parker's heart began to beat very oddly in her chest. It wasn't the feeling like the rush of adrenaline she got when she was jumping off a building, or the flutter when they finally stopped the bad guy and saw the looks of joy on their client's faces. As she turned to face Hardison, she felt like she did when she was standing on the edge of a three hundred foot drop, with nothing but her climbing gear and some lightweight clothing strapped around her, peering into the dizzyingly far space.

Excitement. Anticipation. Nerves.

A_ lot_ of nerves.

"Hardison?" she asked, her voice coming out a little squeaky.

Hardison glanced up from where he was staring at the door, locked in an argument with Nate about the logistics of hacking a keycard from _inside the room_. His voice abruptly died. "What's up Parker?"

"Um..." If they were going to get out before guards came and found them, she was going to have to do this quickly. She knew that, but at the same time her tongue was like a giant piece of peach in her mouth and she couldn't move it right. Her voice shook audibly when she tried again. "Hardison-"

Nate was still shouting in both of their ears, but Hardison suddenly tapped his com, effectively shutting it off. He stepped forward and put his hands on both of Parker's biceps. It wasn't he first time he had done something like that, but it never failed to make her entire body shiver.

"What's up?" he asked again, looking at her with furrowed eyebrows. "Is everything okay? Are you hurt?"

Parker swallowed. He was _so close_, close enough that if she took one tiny little step she would just be able to lean forward two inches and-

"Parker?" Hardison repeated, looking more worried than ever.

"No," she blurted. "I mean, no, I'm not hurt."

He raised his eyebrows, waiting. His hands didn't drop.

"Um..." Parker said again. "So normally I wouldn't be, um, doing this now, but... because we're locked in here, I have something I need to tell you."

"Hey." Hardison rubbed his hand up and down her arm for a second in a reassuring manner. "We're going to get out of here, okay? Don't think like that."

Parker was momentarily confused. "No I- I know. But to get out of here, so they let us out, I have to tell you something."

Vaguely, Parker heard Sophie saying her name. As Hardison's frown deepened from concern to confusion, she mirrored his action from before and turned off her com. "Parker, what are you talking about?" Hardison asked. "Who is they?"

"It- it doesn't matter," Parker said quickly, knowing she would lose her nerve if she waited too long to get everything off of her chest. She also wasn't about to try and explain Eliot and Sophie's whole 'intervention' scheme, considering she didn't exactly understand it herself. "Hardison, I... I'm not very good at- at showing people how I feel. Or even, um... feeling. I'm not very good at feeling."

He tilted his head slightly, face relaxing into a curious smile. "Okay. Go on."

"Uh, yeah, yeah." If he hadn't been holding her arms in such a nice, relaxed way, she would have spun away from him and tried to hide her face. Even so, she couldn't meet his eyes and stared resolutely past his left shoulder. "So, yeah, I'm not good at showing feelings, and I'm not- I'm not very good at _telling_ them either. But it's only fair that you- that you know how I feel, because otherwise nothing is- is going to happen and we're just going to be ruining the team dynamic and ignoring bombs and stuff."

Hardison squinted at her in confusion. "Ignoring... bombs?"

She was going to kill Eliot. "Forget- forget that bit," Parker told him, shaking her head. "My point is that- is that-"

The slice of peach that was her tongue refused to work any more. Hardison smiled slightly and then leaned so close that she could just feel the brush of his lips against her own. "Hi," he whispered.

"Hi," she replied, her voice barely audible.

"I love you, Parker."

At those words, Parker was jumping off the building, spiraling into space, with nothing but the surge in her stomach and Hardison's hands on her arms keeping her tethered. Her dead tongue could suddenly work again.

"I love you, too," she said, wondering for a second at how small those words were for something so big, before she kissed him.

After a few breathtaking seconds, Hardison pulled gently back and pressed a quick kiss to Parker's forehead. "That wasn't so hard, was it?" he asked teasingly.

"Yes, it was," Parker muttered sullenly, reaching out to possessively take his hand. She tapped her com, turning it back on. "Okay Sophie, I told him how I felt. You can let us out now."

"Parker!" Sophie cried. "_Finally_. Eliot and I had nothing to do with this! We didn't lock you two in."

"Do you seriously think we'd jeopardize the mission like that?" Eliot asked her incredulously. "My whole point to doing this was to stop the missions from getting jeopardized!"

Parker's mouth fell open a little. "But you- wait, so- you didn't-"

Hardison had his eyebrows raised, his own com turned back on. "Uhhh... is there something I should know here?"

"I second that," Nate said, not sounding at all amused. "Sophie, Eliot... do you have something to do with the reason Parker and Hardison are locked into that room?"

"For the last time, no!" Sophie cried. "How stupid do you think we are? Look, we took the stairs and are on our way up to the where you guys are. I don't know how we're going to get out, but we'll figure it out when we get there, I guess."

"Wait, so..." Hardison turned back to Parker, frowning. "What was that about you telling me how you felt so they could let us out?"

Parker floundered for the easiest explanation possible. She was somewhat annoyed that it hadn't been Sophie and Eliot locking them in after all, but she wasn't all that upset that she had finally gotten the nerve to tell Hardison how she felt about him. "They- Sophie and Eliot- they were trying to set us up? And Eliot said they were planning on locking us in a room until we told each other how we felt so I just assumed-"

"That they had locked us in," Hardison finished, laughing.

"But they didn't," Parker concluded, huffing with frustration. "So we're still stuck in here!"

She reached forward and gave the door and good yank.

It swung open.

Hardison's jaw dropped. "It was a-"

"It was a pull door." Parker slowly turned to him, looking murderous. "We just got stuck in a room so effectively that I told I loved you, and all the time the door was unlocked and you didn't realize it just because _it was a pull door?!_"

"Wait," Nate's voice came grating into their ears again. "The door wasn't locked?"

"Um..." Hardison was glancing between the door and Parker, looking slightly terrified. "Uh, we should probably get out of here."

Parker gave him a good shove and stalked out of the room.

"Aw, come on!" Hardison called after her. "It wasn't that bad!" Parker didn't respond, so he tried another tactic. "I love you, Parker..."

"I hate you," she told him. "And I love you, too."

**Author's Note: Ahhh Leverage fanfics are funnn I wanna write more :D **

**Well I have like four more seasons of inspiration so I bet I will XD**


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